Nationality: United StatesExecutive summary: Founder and Deity of The Source Family

Military service: USMC (WWII)

James E. Baker, better known as Father Yod, was an ex-Marine WWII vet and wannabe Hollywood stuntman when he fell in with a group called the "Nature Boys", who maintained a vegetarian diet and lived according to Nature's laws. He studied Vedantic theology and became a follower of Yogi Bajan, a teacher of Kundalini Yoga who had followed a number of other spiritual teachers from India to Los Angeles in the late sixties. Baker became disenchanted with Bajan when the Yogi declared that he was not god. Baker took the title himself, changing his name to Father Yod. In 1969 he founded the Source Restaurant, in the Laurel Canyon section of Los Angeles. It became both a profitable health food restaurant and recruitment center for his growing cult of lost and wayward youths.

The Source Family espoused a philosophy that included kindness to animals, raw vegetarian diet, cotton clothing, and sex sans orgasm. Over one hundred lived in a 3-bedroom house in Nichols Canyon, where sleeping arrangements involved a beehive-like complex of cubbyholes. During this period the group would record long psychedelic jams and press records to be sold at the restaurant. These records, such as The Savage Sons of Yahowha, To The Principles For The Children, and Penetration: An Aquarian Symphony are highly sought after by a certain kind of collector.

In 1974, a newborn in the group developed a staphylococcus infection. Upon their arrival at UCLA Medical Center, doctors immediately notified police of suspected child endangerment. Father Yod felt this was an appropriate time to relocate the entire family to Kauai, Hawaii, though his term there was unfortunately short. One of the group was participating in a hang-gliding contest on the island of Oahu. Yod too wanted to try it out. His first and last flight on the morning of August 25th, 1975 ended with him breaking his back after crashing onto a rocky beach. Followers carried Yod back to the house but prayer and meditation still found him dead later that day. They kept his body for three and a half days chanting Yod He Vau He.